I think since everybody was focusing on how the ESRB rating should be enforced, kids shouldn't be able to by rated M game, etc. I just want to point out, that games have nothing to do with this, the shooter of Sandy Hook was not influenced by video games, the shooters at Virginia Tech weren't taking advice and reenacting a scene from COD. The government, or rather, this guy, is looking away from the real problem, and that is he refuses to look at the fact that the people who do this kind of stuff are crazy, they are insane, they are deranged. They have a mental problem, their mind were not thinking correctly which led them to shoot people.

Games have nothing to do with this, the "violent games make children violent" theory has been disproven so many times it's a null argument. What we need to do is try to influence these people and tell them, hey, maybe you shouldn't pick on the growing industry just because it's challenging the current market, maybe you shouldn't blame all the bloodshed onto video games. Maybe it's you not doing your job and keeping everyone safe, maybe it's you the government not helping the insane, the deranged. Maybe it's your fault. Stop pointing fingers at a people you don't understand.

I love how everybody is like, "OH THE WORLD ISN'T PERFECT< EVERYBODY MUST BE STUPID DERRRRRR"
Shut the **** up. There are a million extraneous causes for every problem you attribute to one thing. If anything, you're the one looking for a simple solution because thinking is too hard.

woah, calm it bro
I'm not saying everyone is stupid, I'm saying the exact same thing as you, there are a bunch of causes that make one problem. The people who blame videogames, because everything will be perfect after we get rid of violent games, are thickheaded.

Very true, a lot of people who claim that video games cause violence in children have not even read the studies, most of which say, if anything, they lead to an increase in aggression, which should be perfectly natural in a game meant to challenge you or in a competitive game. The same effects can be found on those that play sports. People prefer to ignore the fact that juvenile crime rates have decreased since 1990 (according to FBI statistics) and that for a lot of people, being able to wreak havoc in a virtual world might actually prevent them from doing it in real life. However, there are a small number that are stimulated by games and emulate the behavior they see, mainly due to mental instability or an absent moral compass altogether. REGARDLESS, they would have likely found that stimulation in some other form of violent media if video games were not around. Coming back to your point, i is not like violent games should be held responsible (in my opinion) if a kid under 17, regardless of his condition, is negatively influenced by a game meant for people over 17. It's like buying a 12 year old cigarettes and then blaming tobacco companies for him getting lung cancer after a while. That said, 12 was when I played my first violent game. At the time, I was a problem child that had a god-awful temper and got detentions every other day. 5 years later, having just turned legal age to buy these games MYSELF, I have landed myself in several advanced placement (where we have been given a research paper (this is my topic)) courses and have not seen a pink slip in years. The fact is, video games can do a lot more good than harm, but since it is so easy to target and shock the uninformed to hating them, it's going to be used as a scapegoat to avoid the harder-to-deal-with problems such as parental abuse and mental illness. Sorry this took so long, sometimes I don't know when to end my talking.

I think they're trying to get the effect kind of like this: You throw twenty apples into a barrel, trying to prove that most of them aren't rotten. You keep adding more and more apples until you find a rotten one and then claim all of the apples are rotten even if you added a thousand more apples.They're trying to find that rotten apple to validify their arguments.